Guilt
by Observer123
Summary: Just a letter from Keswick to anybody who finds it. One-shot.


**-Hey, I´m back and it´s Christmas... but I think you all already realized that, right? Well first I thought "Hey, it´s Christmas, let´s do a Christmas fanfic" but then I thought "Nah! Let´s do something totally different." So, here is something totally different to a Christmas fanfic. -**

To however finds this letter,

Here is the place, the only place I was ever free. Just here, on the paper, I was able to express my thoughts, my inner self without being hindered by the boundaries of my own speech disorder. Just here I am free.

My name? Well, you should better memorize it because if you want to carry on historiography I should get my place there, even if it´s not glorious place. Even if I don´t believe that this letter will be read one day or that someone is left who could read it.

Keswick, that´s the name. That´s my name. And I am the one who is responsible for all this madness. You maybe ask yourself now why I brought this plague about us all? How could you do that?  
Please believe me, it was never my intention that all of this would happen.

It all began as I received a simple job from my agency. The words of my former boss, a flea called the chief, still echo through my mind. "The agency provides you with all financial means that you need. Money is really not the problem Keswick. Develop us this weapon." I still remember that I felt happy about hearing that.

Getting funded by the agency is a great mark of confidence and also it´s every scientist´s dream to make research without being worried about the funding. I was so glad that I even did a little dance after he left my lab.

Yesterday I danced and today I cry. I could beat myself that I hadn´t refused his offer. In a retrospective this moment was the beginning of the end. I don´t want to use time to blame the chief or T.U.F.F. for all what happens. They just provided me with the opportunity. In the end it was me who decided to do that.

The months after that were busy but very productive. I studied the general theories about recombinative DNA which almost turned out to be an impasse. But in the right moment I had the right idea that led to something terribly wrong.

And so, after just four months of intensive research, I created Thanatos. A simple pathogen that was able to sneak around the body's intern defense and to attack all vital organs directly. Thanatos is highly infectious, has an incubation time of 5 hours and kills in 99 percent of all cases. I created the death in the test tube.

The chief was very satisfied by my work and back then, I was it too. How could I even foresee that the worst case scenario would happen? Back then I thought that Thanatos would get locked in a refrigerator somewhere in a secret military base where it would never get sight of the sunlight.  
But, like you see, that didn´t happen.

My work wasn´t done yet even if I already received a big check from the agency for creating the Virus at that time. No, I wanted to test my work. I wanted to see how the creation raged in its host´s body and destroy the live that once lived there. You maybe ask at this point from where this vicious delight about the death of other creatures comes.

I´m actually a pacifist, at least that´s what I always thought about me. But back then madness and megalomania had conquered my usually clear mind. I felt like god. A god that wanted to use his powers. The first experiments were carried out on little multicellular organisms like amoebas. And as expected, they were a complete success.

Nothing survived Thanatos. I continued testing and started with more intelligent species. Hundreds of lab rats shared the fate of the amoebas. At this point my bloodlust satisfied. Thanatos had shown its potential. I could have gone further, of course, but infecting a rational feeling creature, a person that I can talk laugh or cry with, was even in my condition at that time a step too far.

It seemed that there was still a bit of the pacifist I believed to be in me that could stop me. But not the agency. There was no pacifist among them, no voice of reason, nobody who yelled "Stop this madness." They wanted to test on a person.

And so destiny took its unavoidable course as one of my friends and coworkers, Dudley Puppy, stepped unsupervised into my lab. Until today it´s a mystery for me how he managed it to get the Petri plate with a sample of Thanatos out of the locked fridge and into his paws.

I still believe that someone has opened the fridge for him. It would make sense. Dudley was known for his clumsiness. I can imagine that a ranked guy from the agency gave him the Petri plate with the words "Don´t open it or let it fall down."

But, as I said, I´m not sure. It´s also possible that I left the fridge open and he just took a look in it. However it was already too late at that point. As I came back from my lunch break his partner and also a good friend of mine greeted me with eyes puffy eyes that looked at me with a mixture of hate and grieve.

There´s still a shiver running down my spine when I remember this gaze. It was just a few seconds long but so full of intensity that I could feel the pure pulsating disgust in that moment. Like that was enough she added this one sentence that hit me like a train on a track. "This is all your fault."  
The pictures of the events that happened then will haunt me for the rest of my life. I saw Dudley through a window of the lab which was sealed off because of the contamination alarm.

My friend lay there on the ground and writhed in unbelievable pains. Shrill screams of a desperate fight against death echoed through the wall to us. And we just stood there. Gapers unable to help. Louder and louder became his screams and the pains must have been beyond a level on which words could even describe it.

In the end Dudley just wasn´t able to stand these pains anymore. With the last bit of his strength he reached his hand out for a little knife that was on my table. At one go he brought the blade down. He didn´t miss his aim. In the middle of his chest, right in his heart. The screams faded then… forever.

I stop here because it´s easy to imagine what happens next. I got fired from T.U.F.F., I lost a friend and then another one too. Kitty never spoke a word with me again after this incident. She didn´t even deign a look on me. But who wouldn´t do so?

For months I just sat in my apartment and thought about what I´ve done. How much I sinned against nature. I remembered that I once was a scientist that understood the word responsibility. That everything I invented has its pros and cons and that it was up to me to decide if it was wise to pursue a dangerous idea or not. But money and the prospect of fame let me forget this simple ethic.

I thought much about that all until I realized it again what I did with the help of science. I created the death in a test tube. But this time not even a bit of joy or bloodlust were combined with this thought. Just self-disgust. The permanently feeling of being dirty even if you just stepped out of the shower. But I couldn´t wash away my guilt. No matter how often I tried.

Guilt… I am guilty for everything what happened then. If there´ll be a society ever again and this society wants to find someone to pillory, let me be this someone. I won´t be there anymore, but I deserved a symbolic penalization. I just want you all not to forget my stupidity. Maybe it teaches or two a lesson… I just wish this lesson hadn´t cost so many lifes.

Characterize me in all future history books as the devil himself if you like. If you want so, say that I released the Virus in an attack of megalomania. Maybe it helps. The people need someone who they can hate, someone who´s name they just whisper in contempt and I also deserved nothing else. But please believe me, whoever you are that is reading this letter right now, it was never my intention.

After a few months of intensive thinking I came to a conclusion. There was no voice of reason so I had to be the one who yells. Thanatos had to be erased from the face of the earth. I thought that maybe this way I could prevent a future use of it so that no one had to suffer the death Dudley had.

As you see, my intention was actually a good one but the path to hell is paved with these kinds of intentions. And that was exactly the path I took as I sneaked at night into the T.U.F.F. building. Without any problem I came to my lab and could get the last left Petri plate with Thanatos out of the fridge.

But the whole thing was a trap. I was about to clear off with the next step, the annihilation of Thanatos, already in my mind as a group of guards surprised me. And like the Petri plates were damned to fall down again and again, Dudley´s mishap also happened to me.

What happened after that is history. All of you been through that and I think everyone has his own terrible story to tell. The disease spread like wildfire. Cities, states, countries fall a victim to Thanatos. The world that we were used to know stopped existing after just a few weeks. What stayed was a big pile of corpses and I have the blood of every single corpse on my hands.

Also when I look out of the window know I see them lying on the street. Their wide opened that eyes gazing accusatory at me. Even the wind whispers angrily my name. I don´t go outside anymore. Not just because of that. The main reason is that every time I stride through the dead streets I find someone I once knew. And then I see these dead eyes again.

I saw Kitty lying on the street the last time I was out. Her body was lying in a gutter near the apartment building she once lived in. Beneath and around her head I saw the rest of a big red blood stain. I didn´t need long to put two and two together especially as I saw the big wound on her head.

At least I can say that her death was less painful and much shorter… As I looked at the dead hull my friend left on earth I could hear for a second her words again. "This is all your fault." And again her eyes stared at me. Even if they were dead I could steal feel the disgust coming from her.

I´m losing my sanity gradually. My psyche gets destroyed by fear grieve and self-hate. I don´t believe that there is any chance for me to come to terms with myself. If I don´t end it soon I maybe start running around on the streets and eat the flesh of my former friends. That is my greatest fear.

I am last survivor in the city Petropolis and maybe in the whole country. I know that you ask now why I am and especially why you are still alive. The answer to that shows that god is a friend of black humor. We are immune. Thanatos can´t harm us. It´s somehow ironic, I think, that the man who is responsible for all of this madness is allowed to life on. My own creation lost the fight against my weak body.

Well, that´s the end for me and the letter I think. That was my story. I am the guilty one. I am the one who should be lynched by an angry mob. But there is no mob left that could do that. I led them all over the Jordan…

I don´t know if there´s really someone out there who is still alive and able to read this massage. I really don´t believe that. But just in case it is, just for the unlikely case someone comes to exactly my position, I wrote this letter.

Anyway, there is no court left now in front of which I had to justify myself. Just the last instance of my own mind which dictates me my last steps with ice cold logic. If no one is here to pass a judgment on me I have to do it myself. These are the last lines I write down on the freedom of paper. At least I was granted to spend the last part of my life in a place where I can be free.

Goodbye, forever.  
Keswick.


End file.
